LIN ZHANG: CHAIRMAN OF KU LEUVEN ALUMNI CHAPTER BEIJING

FACULTY WORLDWIDE

A living signboard of the Faculty of Engineering Technology and at the same time a model ambassador of KU Leuven abroad. Both descriptions apply to Lin Zhang. As an alumnus of Group T Leuven Campus, he is not only a brilliant engineer, but also a driven entrepreneur and an inspiring educator. It was therefore obvious that he was appointed as the first Chairman of the new KU Leuven International Alumni Chapter Beijing.

Lin Zhang arrived in Leuven together with 30 fellow students from Beijing Jiaotong University (BJTU) in 2003. It was a record number of students that has not been matched since. “It was quite a job before we could leave”, he remembers vividly. “We arrived with a month’s delay due to the consequences of the SARS epidemic. It was hard to make up for the missed lessons, but once we had met, everything went smoothly”.

At Group T Leuven Campus, Lin Zhang studied Electronics & ICT Engineering Technology option Hardware Design. He gained his first business experience at the high-tech company Agilent during his master’s thesis. It prompted him to follow an extra master’s in Industrial Management at KU Leuven after his engineering study. Both master’s degrees formed a solid steppingstone for an academic career, first as a teaching assistant on Group T Leuven Campus, then as a PhD student and postdoc at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of KU Leuven.

Lin Zhang

STEM education

In 2017, Lin Zhang decided to take a different approach and took his chance as an entrepreneur in China. He had already discovered a niche in the market in Belgium: a dire shortage of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) teachers to interest young people in the jobs of the future. In China, high schools appeared to be struggling with the same problem, so Lin Zhang started his own business as an educational consultant in STEM matters. His clients are high schools that he advises on the development and implementation of a STEM policy. This also includes educating teachers according to the ‘train-the-trainer’ principle and developing educational materials that teachers can use in their own class.

Steering Committee

When on 24 August 2019 a new International Alumni Chapter was officially installed in Beijing together with the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Double Degree Programme in Engineering Technology from KU Leuven and BJTU, Martine Torfs, Director of the university’s International Office did not have to look for a pioneer for long. All the tracks led to the BJTU student who came to Leuven in 2003 to study and to teach and who runs his own business in Beijing today. Together with five like-minded colleagues, Chairman Lin Zhang forms a steering committee that is committed to connecting the 200 KU Leuven alumni in China’s capital with each other and with their alma mater in the far Leuven.

Yves Persoons